THE only Sunday train service to provide four East Lancashire towns with a direct link to Manchester has been scrapped after operators claimed not enough people were using it.

First North Western had provided eight services from Colne, Nelson, Burnley and Accrington to Manchester Victoria every Sunday for the past two years, with eight also coming in the opposite direction.

Trains leaving Manchester alternated between a final destination of Colne or Clitheroe every other hour as part of the service, subsidised by Lancashire County Council and the Strategic Rail Authority, the body which decides which routes to fund and who can operate them.

But when funding from the SRA ran out last month and was not renewed, Lancashire County Council and First North Western decided to ditch the services to Accrington, Burnley Central, Nelson and Colne, opting to route all trains to Clitheroe instead.

They claimed not enough people were using the service on the East Lancashire line, compared with passenger numbers on the Ribble Valley line.

But Hyndburn MP Greg Pope said: "I didn't even know this service had been introduced. Perhaps if it had been marketed better over in this part of East Lancashire, more people would have used it.

"I think the attraction of being able to get to Manchester without changing trains at Blackburn would appeal to a lot of people, if they knew about it.

"I'm equally disappointed I wasn't told it was going to be scrapped."

A spokesman for First North Western said: "Sunday services to Colne were supported by Rail Passenger Partnership funding which came to an end at the start of the summer timetable.

"The through Victoria-Colne service was not well used and when developing the case for further funding, it was clear that there is much more demand for travel to Clitheroe on Sundays.

"The decision was therefore taken to run services through Clitheroe and provide journey opportunities to Colne by changing at Blackburn."

Richard Watts, a public transport officer at Lancashire County Council and one of the founders of the Ribble Valley Rail campaign which got passenger services reinstated to Clitheroe a decade ago, said: "It was publicised but the service wasn't used that well from Colne.

"Monitoring the figures closely enabled us to keep the same number of trains coming into the area.